


What Possesses You

by quietasasleepingarmy



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Canon-compliant angst, M/M, POV Ian Gallagher, POV Third Person, Pining Ian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 09:29:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9315545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietasasleepingarmy/pseuds/quietasasleepingarmy
Summary: Mickey smells the fucking same.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I just. . . .have a lot of questions for Ian Gallagher. 
> 
> Title comes from Half Light by BANNERS. I discovered it through [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax632qQZAg8&list=PLxIKQX9DPLonkhWLCHBGkQSiNeRXtnOhi&index=48) fanvid, which I have watched at least a thousand times since 7x11 aired.

 

 

 

 

 

Trevor is clean. Not neurotically groomed and preened like Caleb, who always, _always_ smelled like a careful blend of Hugo Boss and peppermint Orbit. Just. . .clean. He wears loose black t-shirts that broaden the smooth line of his shoulders. His skin looks well-scrubbed. His straight, neat teeth glint in the light.

 

In the weeks and months after Mickey went to prison, Ian smelled him everywhere. There were, of course, the clothes that he’d pilfered from the Milkovich ruin one afternoon when no one was home. The door had swung open when he touched the knob. Who even lived there anymore? Iggy? Ian didn’t know. He hadn’t kept track during the neon blur of his last pre-medicated days. He remembers sex, guns, heavy metal, suitcases, baby giggles, and Mickey, Mickey, Mickey. The pull Ian felt to those lips, those thighs, those stifled groans, that _scent_ was unending. Relentless. Immeasurable. He kept a few old t-shirts and hoodies hidden under his pillow, so he could fall asleep surrounded.

But even when he wasn’t in bed, he swore he could smell him: on the street, on the rig, on the harsh wind. More than once, he had to stop himself from burying his face in strangers’ shoulders on the L.

It was not a clean smell. It was far better than that.

 

 

Trevor’s schedule can be sort of unpredictable. So can Ian’s. Queer kids get thrown out of the houses of their parents or their partners and are in need of emergency housing; traffic jams lead to pile ups on the Expressway. Lunch dates and movie nights get postponed. Ian keeps the volume on his phone turned up all night. He lets Trevor in at 3 in the morning and falls asleep on his back, nose pressed to clean, blank curls.

 

 

Svetlana’s weird, earthy cooking. Perpetually lit cigarettes. Must, mold, dust. Snow and smoke. Baby powder. Cologne. None of it kept Mickey from Ian. He’d hoarded clandestine inhales since the years they spent slipping on their own sweat in a walk-in freezer, fingers interlocked, Ian’s mouth against the sweet place where Mickey’s pulse rose in his neck. He didn’t have to see Mickey walk into a room to know he was there.

Ian would meet him at the door after a shift at the Alibi, just to press his face into the heat of his throat and breathe in whiskey and cigarettes and winter and _Mick_. He would stop any caustic rambling about what this or that motherfucker tried to pull that night with a look, and lead Mickey by the gloved hand into their bedroom.

“Fuck, Ian,” is all he would say before he shut up and let himself be unwound, unsheathed, inhaled. Ian would spread him out and take his time with all the sacred things he wasn’t allowed to have before. Scarlet marks sucked into the paper of white hips. Beads of sweat along the column of a strong spine, gathered by a cupped tongue. He felt like he was getting away with something when he dragged his nose along Mickey’s silky belly and drank his gasps, his sighs, the gentle tension of his tattooed hands.

“You’re fucking beautiful,” Mick would whisper.

Ian would hum around him and close his eyes at the quiet _reverence_ in Mickey’s voice. The voice that once told him he was nothing but a warm mouth. The voice that said “Yo, Angie! Wanna fuck?” And “I just want everyone to know, I’m fuckin’ gay.”

Stories that made up Ian’s concept of himself had been buzzing under his skin and behind his eyes with mounting fervency since since his first crash, and they flickered like busted LED lights when he thought about how Mickey was really his now, for the first time, pliant and worshipful in their bed. The one he’d reclaimed from his shipwreck from a marriage because Ian asked. Or maybe demanded. Stories like, _I would die for my country. Like, family is everything. Protect the weak. Treasure the innocent. True love exists. True love lasts forever._

 

Mickey was his. He was Mickey’s. His body, his mind. And he was fucking splintering.

 

 

Pot and incense and banana lube are the strongest smells at Trevor’s place, and Ian likes them fine. He likes the neat, orderly sex with its precise clean up. He likes getting stoned and falling asleep by 10. The lines that he colors in with pills and mix tapes and ambulance sirens are good because he drew them. Did Fiona draw them? No. Did Lip? No, he did not. Ian decided what his post-manic, Mickeyless life was going to be like. He dated the hot artist firefighter with the well-dressed friends. He got his GED. He fell asleep on the open pages of medical textbooks for weeks. He got a perfect score on the EMT exam. Ian. Who, according to what Fiona told a panel of army MPs, could not take care of himself.

Ian can take care of himself. He takes care of Liam, same as his siblings. He cooks when it’s his turn; he buys groceries. He even takes his fucking B vitamins.

 

 

It wasn’t Mickey’s fault, any of it. That’s why Ian punched him.

They were meant to be partners. They were parents, sort of. They pooled their resources to keep each other and Yevgeny and even Svetlana safe. They were responsible for that grimy haven of a house, reclaimed from a reign of terror. Every day they set out, swords raised, to conquer and procure, through whatever means necessary. Every night they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

But one day the hot whir of the hustle was stopped by a few words: “Don’t touch me.”

Not just _one day_ , to be. . .to be realistic. To be honest. The therapist Ian saw at the psych ward had told him that honesty was paramount, with this disease. That it would try to lie to him, and honesty was a weapon he could use.

To be honest, the hot whirl of the hustle stopped the day after the night he didn’t come home, because he was up doing the porno. He knew Mickey wouldn’t like it, so he didn’t answer his calls, but it was a battle for _them_ , to gain territory for their kingdom. He wanted to lay the filthy money at Mickey’s feet, in solidarity and love. _You’re not the only one who will do deplorable things to keep us safe_. That’s what it was supposed to say.

But Mickey didn’t see that message, written on the sides of each wrinkled bill. He saw, “Ian left with some dude,” or whatever they must have said to him at the club when he went looking. He saw, “Ian doesn’t care enough about me or Yev to tell me where he is.” And then he started talking about hospitals. _Partners!_ And then—hospital talk! Fucking looney bin talk, like Ian and his siblings used to have about Monica. Ian had to show him. He could take care of Yevgeny. He could take care of himself. It was so miserable in that neighborhood; the dark clung like damp to Mickey and the house and the yards. It wasn’t too late for Yevgeny. Ian could take care of him. They’d go to Florida.

 

Ian knows it was ugly. He can’t think about it too much. He can’t necessarily remember it too much. But it’s important to note that it wasn’t Mickey’s fault. Even if everyone believes otherwise. When Ian punched him, it was a request for another form of care. Mickey knew that. Ian thinks he knew. He knew about the static, the swallowing numb. He knew about it but he didn’t know how to fix it, so he smothered with him with pills and Gatorade and charitable blowjobs. He and Mandy were alike in that way: micromanaging the unwieldy Gallagher boys when they refused to act right. Pushing and pulling till they snapped.

When Ian hit him, Mickey did the selfless thing: he hit him back. He drew blood and then licked into it. Whatever else Ian might say, Mickey knew exactly how to love him.

 

 

The burner phone feels fake in his hand. A comically unlikely prop, cut out and pasted onto the tableau of his normal, boring life. Someone is surely waiting in the bushes with a camera to jump out and gleefully shout that this is a weird, staged joke. Was Mickey always this dramatic?

“Miss me?”

_To my fucking core. You’re in my bones, asshole, and I don’t even want you there._

 

 

The rage Ian feels at being tossed out of the van—him, an upstanding citizen, a reformed crazy who now comes to the rescue of other crazies—is an appropriate prelude to the shock of Mickey, small and scruffy and _luminous_ , standing in the shadows of the high school bleachers. Ian’s blood is up and he wants. Wants answers. Wants endings. Wants to kiss the edges of bruises after a good fistfight.

Mick looks gorgeous, which Ian didn’t expect. He’d been sallow and defeated on that shitty, awful day Svetlana paid Ian to look at him through prison glass. Ian had been braced to see the result of a steady decline, but instead Mickey’s lean and stubbly, his hair long around his ears. The hairs on Ian’s arms raise when he gets close.

“You’re under my skin, man. What can I do?”

Fuck if Ian knows. He’s been asking himself that question more or less continuously for over two years.

The blood in his cheek thrums where Mickey touched his face. Panic rises in Ian’s chest when Mickey walks away from him.

“How’m I gonna find you?”

“Look up.”

 

 

Trevor’s surprise at Ian’s guilt offering of Shake Shack stings more than Ian expects it to. It is noon, after all. A busy time for social work, just like every other hour. Ian has been elbow deep in various fluids at every time of day and night—he gets it. It’s not a rejection. Trevor will call him later. Trevor will have him over and they’ll smoke out of his dick bong and listen to EDM and talk about their days. They’ll fall asleep and wake up and continue saving people, which they’re good at. They were saved themselves, after all. They know what it’s like to need help.

 

 

Mickey knew he’d come. Did Ian know? The cigarette falls from his fingers and then there’s only tongue, heat, _scent_. Broad palms along his jaw somehow feel more like home than Christmas morning with all his siblings. Mickey smells the fucking same. Something so much deeper and more developed than sweat and cigarettes. It’s almost like incense, Ian has thought sometimes; like a smoke that might emanate from a golden ball, swung by a mystic. Thick and heady like that.

Ian knew he’d come.

“I have a fucking boyfriend,” he spits.

Mickey’s hands are reverent against his half-hearted pushing.

“Stop,” he says. Ian stops. His lips find Mickey’s pulse point, and their fingers interlock. He inhales. He holds on.

 

 

The way Mickey looks when he realizes that Ian is coming with him aches in a place beneath Ian’s solar plexus. He hasn’t been good. Mickey’s name has whispered up his spine and around his blood without respite for years; Mickey’s voice has instructed him, sometimes kindly and sometimes brusquely, to take his meds and study and go to work. But Mickey doesn’t know that. Why should he? He doesn’t know about the pilfered clothes beneath the pillow, or the frequent dreams where they’re in bed on a winter day, hotly entwined, feathered in murmurs and breath. Ian has often untangled himself from Trevor after these dreams and breathed into the cup of his palms, willing away phantom warmth and scent.

Ian hasn’t been good, but he can be now. Opportunities for atonement and reconstruction stretch before them like mile markers on the road. Mickey’s fingers are splayed on the wheel and somehow, Ian knows, the fabric of their history and future is stretched between them. He’s always liked when Mick drives. He wants to rest his head in his lap, lips to his stomach, and inhale.

They pick up Damon on a dark corner in a bad neighborhood on the way out of Chicago, and things start to go to shit.

 

 

Trevor texts twice an hour after the shoot out at the gas station. Ian’s battery is running down.

 

 

Ian used to tease that Mickey glows in the dark, but it isn’t a joke tonight. He gleams, stretched out under the stars. Moonlight is reflected in his eyes, his teeth, the glass of the beer in his hand.

“You ever think of me, when I was in the joint?”

Ian closes his eyes against the question. His arm stings from where Mickey hit him, his voice raw with hurt: “You never fucking visited me.”

 _He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. How could he know? Should he know?_ Ian is the coward of the century, and maybe it’s better that Mickey never knows that Ian started a fistfight at a friendly baseball game the summer before last just to feel a mere suggestion of what beat through him every day they were together. Maybe he shouldn’t know that it’s Mickey’s face and hands and mouth and ass he thinks of whenever he gets off—not with other people but alone, struggling against the tide of this unresolved emptiness Mickey left him with when the cops carted him off.

Ian knows that he’s the one who’s repeatedly left Mickey, and that he’s going to again. So maybe. Maybe it’s best if he just doesn’t know.

“A lot.”

He can’t stand to hear Mickey’s shuddery breath, so he rolls over and kisses him hard. His hands move all over, to possess Mickey’s neck, his chest, his shoulders, the button of his jeans, the gorgeously familiar heft of his erection. As Ian drags his boxers down his thighs and greedily sucks him down, he claims the harshly exhaled “fuck,” and the almost inaudibly whispered, “Ian.” He privately declares each of the tattooed fingers in his hair his own, if only just this one last time.

 

 

Ian stops Mickey from adding perfume to the list he gives him in front of the Target in Socorro, Texas.

“They won’t be able to _smell_ you, for fuck’s sake,” he says, “but I will.”

Mickey cocks an eyebrow and grins. “And you don’t want me smellin’ flowery, Gallagher?”

“Like some girl’s cheap chemical crap? No thanks.” He leans in and allows himself a deep inhale beneath Mickey’s jaw, reveling in the shiver it elicits. “I like you dirty.”

Ian kisses along the laughter in Mickey’s throat, eyes squeezed shut so tightly it hurts.

“Whatever you say.”

 

 

“I love you.” There are only two things Ian can really offer Mickey, anymore, and this is one: the truth. Even if it is swiftly cheapened by a lie. “This isn’t me anymore.”

When Mickey slaps away the money, his face creased with hurt, Ian is transported back to that bleach-white, siren-loud day. _Don’t touch me._ It was meant as an offering, a way to take care of him because he can’t ever really take care of him, why doesn’t Mickey know that by now? How can he think of Ian as anything but a husk of a person, fit only for pills and mixtapes and ambulance sirens and bed by 10 pm? Why can’t he see that Ian is barely glued together, and will never again be worthy of life as a glorious, chaotic scrawl? He’d only fuck them up, slow them down, get them caught.

He almost doesn’t let go when they kiss, but Mickey decides for him with a final palm to his cheek. 

“Fuck you, Gallagher.”

Ian has never felt more loved in his life, and knows that he deserves the blankness ahead.

 

 


End file.
